By Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

THE political process is the ultimate mechanism for resolving the most basic challenges mankind confronts in moving up from the state of anarchy into societies and nations governed by rules, systems, processes, and institutions. It provides the basis for deciding who should have power, how it should be exercised, and how it can be challenged.

The political process allocates powers and responsibilities to persons and institutions that should exercise executive, legislative, and judicial functions, and creates laws and regulations that define their powers, how they relate, and how they can be held to account. It establishes the citizen as the primary beneficiary of the process and gives citizens the ultimate power to decide key issues such as who leads them and how leaders account to the citizen.

Not all political systems are democratic, although virtually all of them make some claims to being democratic, and many go through basic motions that create the impression of complying with the challenging demands of basic democracy. Textbook characterisations of democratic systems identify these among the basic characteristics of democratic systems: rule of law; accountable leadership; regular, free, and fair elections of representatives; an independent judiciary; strong, codified, and protected civil liberties; organised opposition; and free media.

There are others, but these are held up as benchmarks for the existence of democratic systems. Almost all of these are abused or completely absent in the vast majority of countries that create their own labels of democracy. Anywhere between four and six billion people live in countries that make some form of claim to being democratic.

The absence of a global authority to establish and enforce standards and at least a minimum quality of democratic processes and outcomes creates a tapestry of systems with huge differences, reflecting the sheer complexity of humanity, the vulnerability of power, which makes it susceptible to frequent hijack, and the reality that the vast majority of mankind is poorer because it lives under powers and systems over which it has little or no control.

In a little over two months, Nigerians expect to test the quality and resilience of our democratic system. To be correct, our system has been thoroughly and continuously tested in the last few months, and it has shown depressing evidence of being severely damaged. Significantly, it is also generating an unprecedented interest in the elections themselves, and the outlines of a titanic battle between the fairly new and familiar and the old.

Party primaries showed that massive war chests, primordial pulls, and risky gambles have produced candidates for the large parties. A combination of these factors has resulted in candidates from the two major parties being every bit a part of a past that they should renounce with teary apologies, but will not.

They promise a future that is crippled by the messenger, who wobbles with the message. The political establishment has lined up behind them, playing an old game in which it always wins. There are a few glimmers of something new, exciting, and boisterous on the horizon. The prospect of something new that it promises is being dimmed by the shadows cast by the monsters that have kept our politics a dwarfed hostage: faith and ethnicity as determinants of political choice.

All in all, it is difficult to avoid the impression that our politics are in a ditch, and are digging deeper. At the moment, we are at a worrying standstill. Candidates are exhausted, with more than two months until the elections. Resources have been depleted, and parties and candidates are being cautious about splashing at uncertain prospects.

Ideas are drying up, leaving dregs that had served loyally as mobilisers that work by deepening major fault lines. New developments represent major threats to the elections and the nation. Violence on a large scale is threatening to keep large numbers of potential voters out of the process that should decide who our next set of leaders are.

Virtually the entire South-East is at the mercy of armed gangs that have made massive inroads into the lives of communities, motivated by a motley mix of old and new politics and a seeming vacuum at leadership levels in the region. You can literally take your pick from one or a combination of reasons, starting with an armed cause that insists that its grievances against the Nigerian state can only be resolved by walking away or fighting its way out.

IPOB/ESN or its factions have a stranglehold on a region, such  that it could literally decide whether 70 per cent or 20 per cent of registered voters actually vote. The region appears to have a pronounced anarchy that has no name. Other strands of opinion attribute responsibility for the dominance of organised violence  to politicians in the region; a Federal Government that benefits from ignoring underlying problems; frustrations among the young, and faceless, armed gangs with an unusually sophisticated political consciousness. At the rate INEC facilities and other government assets are being threatened, in a context that suggests that the population has resigned itself to submitting to armed gangs, the elections themselves could become a major casualty.

The North-West is awash with communities that have quietly come to terms with living under conditions and circumstances set by bandits. Depending on terms brokered by governments and other powerful interests, criminal elements that hold communities hostage could permit voting to take place, or keep INEC out of reach for large numbers of voters.

Parts of the North-East are still insurgent territories, and it is unlikely that there will be large numbers of patriotic voters who will defy barriers erected by armed criminals that would flex muscles to prove who is in control. Other parts of Nigeria could be heated up by incendiary politics.

Lagos could witness an unprecedented turf war. Many parts of the South could tense up, reflecting bitter historical and contemporary political dynamics. From Kwara to Taraba, bitter political contests could pit citizens and communities against each other, fuelled by funds and motivation from politicians. INEC’s preparations, facilities, and personnel will be tested to their limits, but a predictable scenario will be one where voting will not take place in many areas where violence threatens personnel or material.

There are other threats. Faith and ethnic identity politics will eat deeply into political competition, fuelling the prospects of disputed election results. Noisy and fired up supporters of a candidate already see him in the villa and will reject any result that does not confirm this vision. Politicians are buying up Permanent Voters Cards like they are gold, indulging in a practice known as voter suppression. In spite of attempts to limit the influence of cash in hand, politicians are exploring new ways to sustain the time-tested practice of vote-buying at polling units.

Between now and the election, the Federal Government, as well as security and law-enforcement agencies, could make a significant difference in terms of security threats to the electoral process and communities. The question is: will they? Which partisan interest will benefit from more or less of a security challenge?

We are not talking about mobilising police personnel to polling units on election days, but a genuine and comprehensive assault on organised violence which can make a decisive difference on turnout, credibility, and acceptability of results. Of particular significance is the relationship between the conduct of a fairly peaceful and credible set of elections on the first voting day, and the possibility of conducting the second set of elections at all.

If you still have the stomach for more worries, just contemplate a possible run-off presidential election, an unprecedented event what will be conducted under all the negative elements designed by the entire electoral contest. Our brand of politics poisons our democratic process. We have been pushing the envelope for a long time, it is now the biggest threat to the survival of our democratic system. There are no acceptable options. From somewhere within, we have to find a way to walk away from the precipice.